


Eyes Open

by atria



Series: Ryoma vs. Puberty [1]
Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 03:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16421540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atria/pseuds/atria
Summary: Outside school, buchou’s just a boy with good aim. He’s a nerd who plays a sport, a giant in glasses. He still hasn’t said a word to Ryoma about why they came here.*Post-series fic, sorta. The seniors retire. Tezuka screws up, Ryoma grows up. An attempt to give them the awkward arcade date they always deserved.





	Eyes Open

**Author's Note:**

> sorry about the story spam! this show is taking over my life! pls comment and make friends if you're interested in that sort of thing! 
> 
> title from the Snow Patrol album, because it's about That Phase.

After nationals, the last day of practice is anticlimactic. The seniors are to go. Buchou gives a speech. Oishi looks weepy. Fuji says, “I’ll miss each and every one of you.” Then he puts his arms around Ryuuzaki-sensei, who looks disturbed. Kikumaru bounces, Inui rustles in his notebook. He’ll be hard up for data once the season ends, Momo whispers.

Ryoma has a hard time paying attention. Winter is coming and already the wind has teeth. It washes up his thighs, steals beneath his shirt, shows up his training jacket for summerweight. Cold always makes him sleepy but his jaw feels like it’ll crack if he yawns. 

He jams his hands in his pockets and kicks at a rock on the ground, ignoring the sound of Momo and Kaidoh spitting and scuffling in a corner about the captaincy. They’re boring, he saw buchou take Kaidoh aside last practice while Momo was gelling his hair. He wonders why Kaidoh can’t just come out and tell Momo; he’ll have to be fukubuchou anyway. Whatever. He tries to flick the rock up like a soccer ball, skims his foot once, twice, but it won’t go. He scowls and glances up, straight into buchou’s face: buchou looks away. 

“Echizen.” He blinks. His face is reflected back to him on Inui’s thick glasses.

“For you,” Inui says. He holds out a notebook, thinner than school-issue, but the paper feels heavier and the cover is woodsy. It’s a gift book. Ryoma turns it over in his hands, confused. Didn’t Inui-senpai already—

“This isn’t my data,” Inui says, adjusting his specs. “I gotta keep something for myself, you know?” He grins his geeky Inui-senpai grin.

“What is it then?”

“From all of us,” Inui says. “All the junior regulars get one. Read it once in a while, okay?”

Ryoma studies him for a moment, then shrugs. “Thank you.” He pockets the book. Inui seems to be waiting for something else, but Ryoma’s not in the mood to talk. Inui gives up cheerfully enough. “Bye, Echizen,” he calls as he goes. He doesn’t sound offended. Ryoma lifts a hand but Inui’s already turned his back, and most of the team is gone now too. Ryoma hurries inside to get warm.

*

Most of the messages in the book are pretty random. They told him the important stuff when they thought he was going for good, and this is what’s left. Kikumaru tells him to eat the cafeteria beef special with peach Calpico, it was the secret to his junior year growth spurt. Inui writes surprisingly chatty advice about everything from how to improve his swings to getting the right change out of the crappy vending machine in the clubroom. Oishi copies a poem — romance, about trees and paths and lasting love, but it isn’t all that gross for the genre. Fuji fills a whole page with a caricature of Ryoma and Momo snoring in the back of a training bus. It’s very good, and Ryoma shudders. He didn’t know Momo’s drool had dangled over his ear canal. 

There’s no note from buchou. 

Ryoma rifles through the book three times before he realises it wasn’t a mistake. Not a word or a doodle, not even buchou’s name signed in his slanting hand. Ryoma’s fingers are fisting in the page before he knows. It’s not  _ important _ , none of this is. But.

“Hey, don’t spoil your book, kid,” some old guy on the train tells him, and Ryoma scowls at him and at the book at the same time. But he’s right: the page with the drawing from Fuji-senpai is all scrunched, Momo’s nose gone swollen and silly on the paper. Oishi’s stupid poem is missing a word where the paper tore, Ryoma can’t tell if it was the character for ‘root’ or ‘leave’. It’s ruined. Ryoma smooths it over with his hand, but it’s no good. He presses the book shut hard. His sinuses burn and he feels a thousand times worse.

*

Morning practice stops with first snow, which comes early this year. Good riddance, Ryoma thinks as he stamps his feet on the frozen court, waiting for Kaidoh to finish his mumbling announcement. It’s all but certain he’ll be buchou now, and Momo’s heckling in the corner sounds a lot like bravado. Ryoma doesn’t mind. Winter will be lazy, a little running to stay warm and in shape but mostly for video games and Karupin. Even his father won’t try to play when the wind threatens to unsling his stupid sack of a habit. Momo will make fukubuchou and get used to listening to Kaidoh instead of yelling back at him all the time, and if he’s bad at it at first, it’ll be kind of funny watching him try.

“Fshh, Echizen.” Kaidoh hisses. He sounds like he’s been trying to get Ryoma’s attention for a while now. Kaidoh jerks his head at the shed and starts walking. Apparently he’s meant to follow. What is it with the cold and senpai suddenly getting all mysterious and talky? Kaidoh and Inui hadn’t said more than a few words to anyone but each other all year, and Ryoma liked it like that. Kaidoh was  _ nice _ when he was trying to communicate without saying anything, tossing Ryoma his jacket or pulling him lower for a stretch that needed height. Ryoma preferred that.

Momo’s eyes track him across the court and he rolls his eyes back, frowning when Momo looks down. Seriously, what the hell?

At least Kaidoh-senpai doesn’t dissemble. “Tezuka-buchou asked me to be buchou,” he says once the door is closed. Kaidoh’s cheeks are pink and it’s not just the cold. He kicks at the floor in a way that makes Ryoma wonder if he’s so  _ obvious _ , too, when he doesn’t want to look at someone.

Another private talk, then. Any other day it’d be sort of funny watching Kaidoh try to gather his wits just because buchou is so  _ buchou _ , but Ryoma isn’t in the mood. He wonders if buchou bothered to write in Kaidoh’s book. Probably, since he’s in charge of the next Nationals team, Ryoma thinks. Buchou probably had a lot to say to Kaidoh. He tries to picture buchou having a lot to say to anyone, and huffs. “Duh, yeah, and?”

He’s pleased when Kaidoh looks momentarily surprised at his lack of surprise, but then he sobers up fast and stares straight at Ryoma. “He also said you’d be a good fukubuchou. I think so too.”

Ryoma’s in shock.  _ But I thought _ , he thinks, then stops. He doesn’t know what he expected, if he did at all. 

“Hey, Echizen. You okay?” Kaidoh’s head is cocked and he seems concerned, which on Kaidoh looks like he wants to crack your skull open to see what’s wrong and also make you sorry you ever made him worry. He’s eerily like Inui in that way.

Ryoma jerks his head. 

“Do you accept, then?”

It’s Ryoma’s turn to stare again. He knows he’s acting stupid and slow, but he doesn’t  _ know _ . He didn’t want or work for this, and it doesn’t feel like a win. 

“You can take two weeks to think. Buchou left big shoes,” Kaidoh says gruffly, kicking at his own feet again. Ryoma’s relieved, and not. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think about, what the alternative is. He nods anyway, and they shuffle back to the main courts without saying another word.

Once again, everyone else is gone. Maple leaves skitter in a circle on the icy clay, neon-bright. They didn’t get the memo about being dead. 

_ Shit. _ Ryoma stops at the white line. Did anybody bother to tell Momo?

*

No morning practice tomorrow means no Momo. Oishi corners him at lunch. He asks after Ryoma’s day, food and cat before getting to the point. 

“So. About next year’s team. Did you hear about the, uh?”

“Yeah. Yesterday,” Ryoma says. He puts his chopsticks down. The grilled fish he just ate does a flip in his stomach and he frowns.

Oishi makes a strange face, but then he smiles. “Congratulations, then.” He sounds like he means it, too, voice steady and looking Ryoma in the eye. It makes Ryoma feel warm at the core though he hasn’t decided anything, and is that what he’s supposed to do, talk to people and make them feel like that? Because Ryoma can’t. He’s never cared about that before, and dread makes him cold. He hadn’t thought he would be  _ bad  _ at this before. That he might mess up and let people down.

“I don’t,” he starts and stops, annoyed at himself. “I mean I didn’t say yes yet.”

Oishi’s eyes go wide. “You told  _ Tezuka _ no?”

“What? Kaidoh-senpai said he’d give me time. I haven’t, buchou hasn’t,” Ryoma says and shuts his mouth. He feels five years old. His cheeks are hot and his eyes are hot and he wants to get out of here.

“Oh, sorry. I just thought, we agreed he would go first since it was his—” At least Oishi doesn’t seem to be doing any better. He fixes the table with a hard look and starts again, looking up at Ryoma earnestly. “That is, we knew you were younger than the usual, but I know you would be good at it. You’ve grown so much this year, more than anyone I know.”

Ryoma blinks at the praise. He feels the way he often felt when he first started school in Japan, always missing a greeting or a polite question or a particle at the end of his sentences. Oishi just smiles, glancing down at Ryoma’s lunch for a moment instead of his face. 

“You know, you should eat more beef,” he says. “It made Eiji shoot up half a foot in junior year.” Then he wishes Ryoma luck and disappears into the lunch crowd, probably off to find Kikumaru or Tezuka or whatever he spends his time doing when he’s not on the courts.

Ryoma stares. That was the exact same thing Kikumaru-senpai wrote to him. What  _ do _ they talk about when they’re not all together?

*

Ryoma ends up on the courts after school anyway. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. If he gets home it’ll just be his dad, Nanako is away on some school trip. Lately the old man has taken to asking about the team more, and he hates the idea that he might not have answers. Momo hasn’t come looking for him all day.

At least it’ll be empty today. Just him, his racquet and some foolhardy squirrels. The thought of drilling smashes into the concrete wall is satisfying, and he already feels the dense thud of the ball, the hot quick blood in his veins when he pushes harder and harder. He’ll wear himself out today.

Except there’s a figure on centre court, aiming balls into a basket across the frosty net. Ryoma knows who it is by the motions and stance alone. Buchou stands as tall as an icon, his shoulders moving so minimally and effortlessly between swings he might as well be a bust. 

Mom asked about his team once. She wanted to know what sort of boys they were aside from their tennis skills, how they looked, did he have photos? Ryoma told her a bit about everyone, his mind straying to buchou. He always thought of buchou from the back or turned halfway to the side. How his hair glinted almost fair in the early evening light, like so much gold. How even his back was fierce and spare and -- he supposed -- sort of correct, kind. How he stood above the others but didn’t seem to care about his place at all. It looked like everything Ryoma wanted to be in tennis. “Sort of like the guy in American church,” he told his mom when he got to Tezuka, and she looked confused for a long while before she said,  _ Jesus _ ? He said, “Yeah, I guess,” and she laughed and scratched the base of his head like he would with Karupin, and said no one is like Jesus, especially not a fifteen-year-old boy. Left out of the joke, he scowled and didn’t bring it up anymore.

Tezuka in the grey winter light is dimmed, immovable. He turns when Ryoma stops and says, “Echizen,” and even his voice is low and cool and made of stone.

“Buchou.”

“Kaidoh told you about being fukubuchou yesterday.” It’s not a question. “What are you thinking about?” he adds when Ryoma doesn’t answer.

“I’m not sure.” Ryoma’s shoe is scuffing the ground and he makes himself stop. He’s said so too much lately, been put on the spot too often.

All because of buchou. Who’s looking at him sternly and inscrutably, and Ryoma doesn’t care that he’s never cared about understanding what people want from him, because buchou’s always demanded, and it was the first time Ryoma felt like he owed anyone an answer.

But I don’t, he thinks all of a sudden. I don’t care and I don’t want. He looks up at buchou, sure he must be glaring, and doesn’t give a damn. It’s freeing. He stands before Tezuka without straightening for the first time in forever.

“I asked you to become a pillar to the team, and you did,” buchou is saying. He watches Ryoma closely, and Ryoma stares back, dares him to see. “What’s your hesitation now?”

Ryoma shrugs. Doesn’t say anything.

“Echizen-kun,” Tezuka says carefully, and that does it, that extra inch of politeness, space, snotty seniorish  _ distance _ now that Tezuka is off the team and isn’t  _ with _ Ryoma anymore, doesn’t  _ care  _ \--

“I don’t want to be the pillar of anything,” he yells. He’s been slapped by Tezuka before. Took that glorious backhand flat on his face. He’s not afraid. “Not for you lot. Did you even tell Momo-senpai?”

In an instant Tezuka is there, crowding up all the space Ryoma can see. I’ve asked for it now, he thinks. Feels a sick thrill then, that palm hot on his wrist like it was yesterday, closing around his arm like it was nothing. He feels feverish.

But Tezuka moves away. His brows draw high and tense on his forehead. His shoulders sigh and pull into himself. Buchou towers, his height a moat. He narrow and lengthens and draws away all at once, further even then he was in his anger.

“You’re wrong to say that,” he says sternly, every word a bite, but he’s far away. He looks something other than furious or annoyed, just -- tense, and strange, and like no look he has worn on his face before, like no one Ryoma has met. Something salty bursts on his tongue and Ryoma realises he bit his lip into bleeding. He’s distracted for a moment, and the last he sees is buchou passing his tongue over his own mouth as though in sympathy, Ryoma’s tall reflection, before he turns and goes and Ryoma’s left staring on the court again, breathing hard and hot in the stiff wind. 

*

At lunch next week, Momo passes in the hall. He yells and waves at Ryoma, nearly his regular self, except they don’t really look at each other even when they talk. Ryoma tries to say something when Momo walks up, comes close, but Momo brushes past. The winter uniform comes with lots of layers. When Momo touched him he felt like bundles of cloth, nothing inside at all.

Ryoma takes his lunch to the roof. Secret to Tokyo winter is, the colder it is the brighter it is. To stay warm you keep close to the sun: Hence, the roof. All the neighbourhood cats know the trick and all the students don’t. 

So much the better. Ryoma wants to be alone.

Halfway up the fifth flight of stairs, though, he hears noises. There are people on the roof. He can see the colour of their uniforms through the small matte window, make out a voice: Fuji. He’s saying sharply, “You don’t know what you want, Tezuka.”

Oh.

Ryoma strains, but buchou doesn’t say anything he can hear. Then, “Don’t let that spoil it for him.” Fuji again. The lock snicks. Ryoma glances down the stairs but it’s just one route, no way he’ll dart away without being seen. Too late now. The door swings open and Fuji comes through first. 

He smiles and it’s sharp. “Echizen,” he nods. Tezuka doesn’t say anything. He seems not to see Ryoma. He’s so tall, he shoulders past Ryoma just walking past, like a bully or a drunk stranger on the subway. Their bones jar and Ryoma winces. 

Somehow, this is worse than the notebook, worse than the day on the tennis courts, worse than Momo.

*

“What’s wrong, boy? Got beat up? Girl troubles?” Dad sounds actually concerned, though it might just be because he’s brought girls into it. Ryoma doesn’t reply. He toes his shoes off and stomps sockless to his room, his feet so cold they burn on the bare wooden floor. Good. He locks the door and dives under his bed for the old chocolate box where he hid the two tennis balls, one Ryuuzaki’s, one unmarked, though he never forgot what it meant. He takes the second one and inhales. It smells like grass and sweat and sock. He sniffs harder, wishes he could wedge it in his mouth, eat it, stopper whatever it is in his throat that howls, claws and scabbers and hollows him out. It’s not fair. He’s all inside out. He chokes and his mouth fills but it’s his eyes that brim over, ooze. His nose drips and the ball buchou threw at him darkens, goes dirty, and he resents that he caught it easily and without thinking, before he had any idea what it was like to play him, to be recognised, to stand in court C with his hands in fists and know Tezuka hates him.

*

The next day, Ryoma feels as though he just got over being sick. His throat is scratchy and he’s listlessly, righteously sorry for himself. It’s unfair. He usually has a feeling about once a year, and it’s when he gets fever high enough to freeze him out of his mind. Today something’s wrong with him but the difference is it doesn’t get him out of library duty.

He stamps his way to the circulation desk with the last load of books from his class, his new boots making his feet clompy. The librarian seems to think he’s doing it on purpose, one of those dumb athletes, her expression says. He wants to roll his eyes. Then stops short.

Buchou is standing with his back to the other counter, his arms crossed. His expression is blandly stern but he leans one hip on the desk; his body telegraphs waiting. The librarian is too awed or bored to protest.

“Echizen. You’re done?” 

Ryoma’s too stunned to do anything but follow. Tezuka’s in home clothes, his hair wet -- from the gym shower? They can’t be playing tennis, then. They end up at the bus stop instead of the train, and when it rolls up, Tezuka pays for two rides without saying anything when Ryoma says he doesn’t have a season ticket, his just works for the train.

They sit side by side where he can’t see buchou’s face. He doesn’t talk, so Ryoma doesn’t either. 

His phone buzzes on the bus. It’s from Kikumaru. _Yo. Fuji asked today if you liked arcades?? Thought I better tell you?_ _He gets weird this time of year._

A pause, then:  _ Is this about fukubuchou? _

There’s no way he means Oishi.

Ryoma flips his phone shut.  _ Gossips _ . He keeps forgetting that there's this whole game of broken telephone in the senior class, Oishi to Kikumaru to Fuji to Tezuka then back to Oishi again, Inui the go-between scurrying rounds with his notebook. Kikumaru-senpai is very, very good at fishing for information without seeming like he is. It must come from having so many sisters. Ryoma groans. In the next seat, Tezuka lifts an eyebrow at him. 

Right. Ryoma’s probably the worst source, actually, since he doesn’t even know what they’re doing. He tries to puzzle out the connection between Fuji and arcades, arcades and buchou, when it hits.

“Buchou. Where are we going?”

Tezuka clears his throat. “Minamata Mall,” he says.

Ryoma’s eyes bug out. There’s a whole basement devoted to limited edition game stations, one of the best outside Tokyo proper. It takes a connoisseur to know. “Do you even know how to play?”

Tezuka doesn’t reply but Ryoma could swear he flushes a little. It’s in the tip of his pale ear. Ryoma’s so amazed he forgets to be mad or sad. What did Fuji-senpai  _ do _ to him?

*

Buchou is bad at games. It’s not that he doesn’t play well, he just doesn’t seem to get the point. He picks the intellectual games, or the ones on shit machines. He actually checks the prizes before inserting the coins. He hovers at Ryoma’s shoulder without saying a word, and unlike tennis, it makes Ryoma  _ lose _ . 

And he’s bored. He isn’t wearing a watch -- so definitely the gym before this, then -- but he glances longingly at his wrist as though his watch tan is superior to the entertainment on offer. He fingers the collar of his shirt, the weird pendant he wears. He fidgets when he’s not playing. 

Ryoma tries to ignore him, fails. He slumps back in the chair when he hits an asteroid in the powered-up driving game. It’s rigged to make it seem like he’s flying a spacecraft. It should be so cool. He wishes for Momo, remembers why Momo isn’t here.

“Buchou,” he says, exasperated. “Can you at least try to beat me at this?”  

Tezuka just raises his eyebrow, but Ryoma can tell he’s getting a little riled up. Never mind that Ryoma only got the consolation prize last round, a keychain from some random cartoon when he was going for the boxing glove. Tezuka puts his hand on the controller meaningfully, and Ryoma gets out of his way. Watches buchou push his glasses up, hunch over the console and furrow his pale brow like a real geek, a veteran who’s never seen sun.

He beats the high score.

They’re unstoppable after that. The best thing about playing arcades when you’re really into it is that you don’t actually have to talk. Ryoma can’t let Tezuka beat him at something he doesn’t even care about, so he picks the games that look the most rigged, the hardest to win, and knuckles his way to the grand prizes. And where he goes, Tezuka follows. He’s not as good at some of the other ones, especially those where you just need good eyes, but he more than keeps up.

Ryoma glances at him in the flashing light of a fight game that seems headed for a win for the zombies. Tezuka’s frustrated, but isn’t giving up. The machine glow is psychedelic on his glasses. Outside school, buchou’s just a boy with good aim. He’s a nerd who plays a sport, a giant in glasses. He still hasn’t said a word to Ryoma about why they came here.

Against all odds, he wins. His prize is a giant unicorn with a sparkly mane and eyelashes. The tinted container makes it look an edgy purple but Ryoma suspects in real light it’ll be sweet lavender, off-lilac, pure girl. It’s the sort of thing middle school boys give to their middle school girlfriends.

Buchou holds it out to him without words. He has to use both arms.

“Nah, buchou, it’s yours. It’ll match your shirt.” Against his own will, Ryoma smirks. Tezuka’s mouth twitches and his shoulders stutter like he’s trying very hard to fence in a snigger. They glare at each other for a whole verse of the horrible rap song on the speakers, not-laughing but not looking away either.

Tezuka is the first to move. “Time to go,” he says. Ryoma doesn’t disagree. It’ll be enough work getting their haul home on the rush hour bus as it is. 

Doesn’t mean he doesn’t wish this could last, though.

*

Minimata Mall sits over a main interchange: lots of buses go back to Seishun but most doze for long minutes before starting up. They pick an emptier one and sit in the back, still not facing each other.

Tezuka doesn’t say anything. Ryoma wonders if this was some sort of weird peace gesture, if it was engineered by Fuji-senpai. And if it was, why Tezuka bothered, since he’s not even properly buchou anymore. Doesn’t matter. Ryoma isn’t, can’t be angry anymore. 

He knows he doesn’t have to talk so long as he’s sitting with Tezuka. It’s not expected, goes against the grain of who they are when they are together. But the silence of the unlit bus is confessional. If he doesn’t say it now, he might never say it.

“I’m going to tell Kaidoh-senpai no,” Ryoma blurts. His heart heaves and he frowns. He never knew it could run so loose, play so many tricks on him.

Docked in the bay, the bus is quiet save the low electrical hum. This dark and this still, it could be going anywhere. They’re in a boat, a cave, a plane. Ryoma waits.

“Okay,” Tezuka says. He doesn’t sound sorry, or stern, or mad. Ryoma glances at him, can’t see much but the glint of his specs. He thinks Tezuka might be a little sad, that he might have surprised that look on his face once before but recognises it only now, with some other sense than sight. But the edge buchou carries in his voice has slipped out, too, and he sounds relaxed. He doesn’t say a word about tennis, or the team, or next year. In the dark next to Ryoma he  _ feels  _ like buchou again, and yet not. He feels closer. They don’t talk again as the bus slowly fills and settles lower on its wheels, as the conductor climbs in and announces the next stop. Nor as the bus pulls into the evening light, as it winds through the city and the suburbs and the sub-suburbs, not till it reaches the train station where Ryoma presses the bell from his window seat and Tezuka leads the way off the back.

Not till Tezuka says, “You’re okay going back on your own?” and Ryoma nods yeah, and they part without saying much else for their own trains home. Ryoma doesn’t look at Tezuka later except that he reads the bus map again and again on the way back, going over the spot where Tezuka could’ve gotten off to reach home faster, and then the section of route he stayed with Ryoma instead, till he alighted at the interchange with Ryoma and asked him about his way home as though it was nothing, as though nothing had happened after all. 

Except Ryoma knows, now.

*

The next day he tells Kaidoh in the clubhouse. He says that Tezuka-buchou already knows. Kaidoh grunts. “Good. I’ll be waiting for you next year, brat.” Ryoma doesn’t even protest the epithet.

“Hey,” he calls at Kaidoh before he goes. “When you’re looking to talk to Momo-senpai. He likes burgers.”

Kaidoh’s eyes bulge, disgusted, either by the thought of Momo or the burgers or going to burgers with  _ Momo _ . 

Ryoma chortles and walks away. He has a new number in his phone. It’s going to be a good season. But until then it’ll be a slow, lazy winter of Karupin and video games.


End file.
